Please Don't Be Offended

Why you shouldn't be put off so much by my comedy special or my Twitter rants. Sandusky, on the other hand...

Hopefully when you're finished reading this, you'll want to see my new stand-up special, Please Be Offended, on Epix. Normally, plugging in the first sentence of an article is in bad form, but considering I will lose some of you, I thought it best to get it out of the way. The special was named not because my material is "so dangerous," but because the public has gotten so hypersensitive. I don't think what I do is shocking or offensive at all. Comics who consider themselves "mavericks" or think the crowd doesn't get them are normally lousy comics. There's nothing more revolting than some milquetoast hack firing out pseudo-edgy, predictable duds with a forced rage and angry face and thinking they're going to wind up in the Bill Hicks Hall of Fame. When I'm doing a joke and the crowd groans disapprovingly, I want to run through the room with a flamethrower. I can't count the number of times I've wanted to eat bath salts and start biting the faces of people in the audience for moaning their displeasure loud enough for everyone to hear.

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But I'm lucky, because I never get in trouble for what I say. Simply because there's nothing for special-interest groups to threaten me with. What are they going to do — not allow me to pick up a prostitute because I said something awful on stage? Twenty years of only moderate success does have its advantages. I'm not famous enough for anyone to bully.

Blasting Al Sharpton in my act feels great, as does mocking that Potsie Weber-haired creep Rick Santorum. I try to avoid going after the conservative politicians specifically, because it's too easy and predictable an angle for a comedian to take. But Santorum just really bugged me. I hate anyone against gay marriage or gay rights for any reason, but this nerd got under my skin more than most. I don't pray often, but when I do, it's for Rick Santorum to be arrested for foot-tapping in a men's room. I have never wanted TMZ to have a glory-hole photo of someone so badly in my life. And, for the record, I know Rick Santorum is not a pedophile, but if all I saw was a photo of him in that awful sweater vest, and you told me he was a social-studies teacher arrested for file-trading with Jerry Sandusky, I'd believe you.

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And as you are no doubt aware, the verdict in the Sandusky case came down recently — guilty on 45 of 48 counts. I doubt this came as a surprise to anyone except Sandusky's wife, who apparently notices nothing out of the ordinary, ever. If she had been in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, she probably would have told the Warren Commission she heard a firecracker, and then the president's hat fell off. Though she committed no crime, Dottie Sandusky is at worst complicit, at best a blithering idiot with blinders on. I know some people see her as a sort of victim, but it's hard for me to feel empathy for a woman who not only turns a blind eye to pedophilia, but also looks like Newt Gingrich.

And I love how sensitive all the Penn State sycophants got about Joe Paterno criticism. People wanted to lynch me when I went on Twitter and mocked him after he died. There's still a giant statue of him at Penn State, so I wrote, "From now on, anyone raped at Penn State should just tell Joe Paterno's statue. It couldn't help you any less than the real Joe would have." Which I thought was a pretty salient point. Penn State fans, however, thought I was making a point just as an excuse to wrap a cheap joke around it. I guess we were both right.

While Sandusky certainly deserves everything that comes to him, I find myself grieving. Not for him, of course, or his family, or the memory of Joe Paterno, or the legacy of Penn State. I couldn't care less about any of those things. I am grieving selfishly for the death of the story. I love horrible stories like this that dominate the media, because it's something challenging to talk about onstage. People's initial response is to hate your guts, and then they reluctantly find themselves laughing. The victory comes in knowing that once we all go home, members of the audience are going to inexplicably feel like they need a shower.